Free The Art of Disposal by John Prindle

weighing his options.”
    That was all he said. That was all I needed to hear.

BING CROSBY
    Christmas Eve, 1975. I was six months old, spending the holiday at a drug dealer's house out on state route 52. My Mom had a nose and arms that worked overtime. Her dealer was a loser named Rhett DeFoe: a guy who'd spent more time in the clink than out on the street. He'd just been paroled, and was living back at home with his elderly father. I guess it's hard to see that your own kid is rotten.
    My own Dad was spending the holiday at his home away from home, The Hitchin' Post Bar and Grill, where he was well-known for falling off of stools and passing out in the vestibule. Everyone knew that Rhett DeFoe was giving my Mom a little something extra when she stopped by for the stuff. Some of the gossip ran that Rhett was my real Dad, and it's entirely possible.
    So my old man was pickled at the Post, and my Mom was scoring nose-candy from her not-so-secret convict lover (you'll never see an episode of Leave It To Beaver with that storyline). Rhett's seventy-three year old father was napping in his recliner, listening to Bing Crosby's I Wish You A Merry Christmas album, when the guys in black leather coats knocked on the front door.
    I've heard so many versions. Just like a ghost story, the wildness of the detail depends entirely on the imagination of the teller. Here's what's certain: Rhett had shorted them some of the money, and it wasn't the first time. See, the criminal world works a whole lot like the regular world. Honor, integrity, follow-through—these things matter. Of course I never knew Rhett, but I've met plenty of other guys stamped from the same mold. They cheat and lie, and they'd rat you out for a hundred dollar bill.
    They plugged the elderly father first. Then they walked far to the back of the house and into the bedroom, where, according to some versions of the story, my mother was on her knees and Rhett was standing in front of her. They blew a few holes into Rhett and ended his earthly fun. Then the boys had a little holiday party with my Mom before ending her illustrious career as a wife and mother. I was on a blanket on the bed the whole time, crying and doing the things you'd expect a baby to do with a whole lot of racket going on.
    Then they did a burn job, gasoline, like me and Dan the Man did to the West Virginia Boys. Lucky for me, one of those thugs had a soft spot. He wrapped me up in the blanket and carried me outside, far away from the house, and laid me down under a pine tree. If it weren't for him, I'd've burned to death before I ever got a chance to grow up and die the right way.
    Before they struck the match, one of the gang ran an extension cord from an outside socket, plugged in the turntable, and set it out in the snow. He dropped the needle and forced Bing Crosby to croon into the vacuum of the wooded night.
    Then came the firefighters, aiming hoses as flames licked the sky. The house burned. One of the firemen, a guy named Noah Lynch, thought he heard a baby crying. The other guys said it was just the wind; the squeal and hiss of water meeting its foe. But Noah left his post and wandered out and into the darkness, where he found me wrapped up and dying in the cold. I wonder if the Star of Bethlehem was shining that night.
    About a month after the incident, my old man stumbled home from The Hitchin' Post, swallowed a dozen Libriums, and went off to the land of eternal sleep. I guess things are easier over there.
    Noah Lynch and his wife Miriam took me in. When I had questions, they gave answers. Not that they could've ever brushed it aside. In a quaint Indiana town, people don't just know your dirty laundry: they know which corner you throw it in.
    Mr. Lynch described that eerie night—how his firetruck pulled in and Bing Crosby was singing, unaware that a house was burning down right behind him.
    “I am a poor boy too, pah-rum pum pum, pum,” he said. “The Little Drummer Boy. I'll never forget